NYCPHP Meetup

[Christopher Hendry]

unfortunately, the problem comes in with the cost of the searches.  There
are multiple levels of searches available to the Travelocities of the
world - the most expensive being the up-to-the-minute fares.  If they
provided each person casually browsing for flights the up-to-the-minute
prices, they'd go out of business.  These sites only see about a 1%
conversion.

What you're seeing when you first search is not avialable fares, but cached
fares (a much cheaper search .00066 compared with .05 - or something like
that) - the travel sites will not show you the available fares until you say
you'd like to book.

That said, not all engines use the Sabre GDS (though most do) - which is the
one that charges the most for look-for-book fares - so try other sites and
you should get better results.  Though Sabre is the only GDS that offers
webfares (ie, better rates on the web than available through travel agents).

ps - one of the sites (to remain unnamed) has hired some of us NYPHPers and
once the backend is complete, I'll be sure to release the site (and
hopefully friends & family rates) to NYPHPers, so keep your chin up, help is
on the way...

-> -----Original Message-----
-> From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org
-> [mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org]On Behalf Of David Mintz
-> Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 1:11 PM
-> To: NYPHP Talk
-> Subject: [nycphp-talk] Travelocity sucks (semi-OT)
->
->
->
-> OK, this may be a little OT, but OTOH it's about web/database programming
-> (and the Customer Experience).
->
-> I have been back and forth with Travelocity's customer service because I
-> complained about the following phenomenon. You search for flights; you
-> select an outboound flight priced at $405/round trip; you select a return
-> flight priced at $405/round trip; then you come to a screen that says
-> oh, sorry, make that $652 for this itinerary. Fine, you say; prices are
-> volatile so let's try again. You repeat the procedure, with the
-> reasonable, almost unconscious expectation that their data will have been
-> updated, and guess what, you get the exact same behavior. Not amusing!
->
-> Now, their customer service folks have given me a series of ever more
-> muddled and inconsistent explanations. First they said,
->
-> > Our system pulls the information from the Sabre network onto the site
-> > based on the data you enter in your search parameters. The
-> airlines, car
-> > rental agencies, and hotels publish their information in Sabre and are
-> > responsible for updating it at least 5 times a day at times of
-> their own
-> > choosing. Because the availability is sold in real time, the
-> information
-> > can become past-dated between updates. Depending on your search method,
-> > you may see rates/fares offered that have no availability left, or
-> > itineraries that show valid prices based on our most current
-> > information, but are actually no longer available at that price when
-> > checked against actual availability in the system.
->
-> But when I insisted that I was the customer and I said it sucked
-> that they
-> were displaying stale data regardless of the excuse, they said
-> (and I wish
-> I were making this up):
->
-> <<The information we receive from Airlines is current at the point in
-> which is it is supplied.  We do not have have a direct connect to
-> availability, once a request is made, the new request is sent to the the
-> airlines to check against availability.>>
->
-> <<At this point the airlines will notify us if the availability is still
-> there.  As the availability is constantly changing, so is the
-> availability. [sic] >>
->
-> What is it with the airline/travel website industry? If they have the
-> wherewithal to connect with wherever and fetch current data at the moment
-> you are about to go for your plastic, then they can do it before they
-> display the prices, can't they?
->
-> Perhaps switch-and-bat is their true intention. But if they want
-> to get it
-> right, they should hire some NYPHPers to rebuild the whole deal from the
-> ground up (-:
->
->
-> ---
-> David Mintz
-> http://davidmintz.org/
-> Email: See http://dmintzweb.com/whitelist.php first!
->
-> "Y dále p'abajo"
->
-> 	Tito Rojas
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